Mysterious Island, on Hallmark Channel
IMDb; Mill Creek Entertainment; Sonar Entertainment; Wikipedia
It starts with a voiceover by Patrick Stewart talking about the island. Then we see a few pirates show up looking for treasure. One is dragged off by some creature, the others get out in a hurry. Then we see a Confederate prison camp during the Civil War, where a Union captain named Cyrus Smith, and a former slave named Neb are planning their escape. A Southerner named Pencroff, who has been arrested for embezzlement, overhears their plans, and so they let him join them. They also take along a widow named Jane Spillet and her daughter Helen. They steal a balloon, and later crash near this island, and drift to shore.
They will have to face plenty of giant creatures, mostly bugs. They will also meet the infamous Captain Nemo (Patrick Stewart), who has been living on the island for like 10 years, wishing to remain isolated from the world. All that is left of his crew is his manservant, Joseph, who sympathizes with these strangers more than Nemo does, and helps them on several occasions. Nemo wants Smith, an engineer, to help him create a bomb he's designed, which uses a radioactive substance found only on this island (which incidentally is what makes the creatures on the island so big). He's decided war is going to destroy mankind, and it must be stopped, and the only way to do that is to create a weapon so powerful that no one would ever dare start another war. Smith refuses to help, so Nemo casts them all out of his complex, to fend for themselves. So they have to deal with the creatures, of course, as well as more pirates who show up looking for the legendary treasure.
Pretty much the only one of the pirates who wants to stay to find the treasure is the captain, Bob Harvey. The others are all scared of the island and want to leave, but they're more scared of him. One of them, however, was left for dead early on, a man named Blake who never really wanted to be a pirate, but had been sort of adopted by Harvey. He befriended Helen and the others, and helped them out. They also met an old friend of his named Ayrton, who Harvey had stranded on the island years ago. Anyway, in the end, after all the obstacles they overcome, and some deaths along the way, they're all driven from the island by a volcano. The end.
The movie is, of course, based on the book by Jules Verne, which alas, I've never read, so I can't make any comparisons. I thought the movie was okay, but not really great. Definitely not something I ever care to see again, but I don't mind having seen it this once. I still might want to read the book someday, or see some of the other film adaptations that have been made over the years...